Python Unit Testing: Automatically Running the Debugger when a test fails

Question

Is there a way to automatically start the debugger at the point at which a unittest fails?

Right now I am just using pdb.set_trace() manually, but this is very tedio

Answer 1

To apply @cmcginty's answer to the successor nose 2 (recommended by nose available on Debian-based systems via apt-get install nose2), you can drop into the debugger on failures and errors by calling

nose2

in your test directory.

For this, you need to have a suitable .unittest.cfg in your home directory or unittest.cfg in the project directory; it needs to contain the lines

[debugger]
always-on = True
errors-only = False